A scene from the J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold” video, with Peter Wolf up front.
Peter Wolf, the frontman for one of rock’s great live acts, the J. Geils Band, has announced his memoir. Waiting on the Moon: Artists, Poets, Drifters, Grifters and Goddesses is coming March 11, 2025, via Little, Brown. It’s available to pre-order in the U.S. here and in the U.K. here. Wolf will support the memoir with a book tour (dates are below, though tickets are not yet available).
The November 2024 book announcement notes that the lead singer and songwriter of such classic rock favorites as “Centerfold” and “Must of Got Lost” shares a treasure trove of vignettes, musings and recollections of his fascinating life during his six decades long career in the new book.
Wolf grew up in a tiny, three-room apartment in the Bronx, New York, raised by his Bohemian intellectual mother and his father, a former Vaudeville singer, who influenced both his love of music and painting. Through his wanderlust he came to rub shoulders in his Zelig-like life with some of the most iconic artists and musicians of his generation—including a very young Bob Dylan as he arrived on the Greenwich Village folk scene.
Each chapter reads as its own short story such as when Wolf reflects on his art studies in Boston—where he shared an apartment with David Lynch—and recalls stories of first love, his untraditional literary education, and his soulful early musical influences such as Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker. Many other greats left their impressions on him, including members of the Rolling Stones, Tennessee Williams, Alfred Hitchcock, Sly Stone, John Lennon and Van Morrison. He also sheds light on his marriage to Faye Dunaway during the height of her Hollywood career.
While the J. Geils Band only achieved modest Top 40 play early on, their reputation was earned as a live band with great concert recordings; their first Gold album was for 1972’s Live Full House. The first pop radio successes that Wolf and his songwriting partner—the Geils Band keyboardist Seth Justman—initially earned were with “Give it to Me” and “Must of Got Lost.” It wasn’t until the early ’80s that the band became a Top 40 favorite, first with “Come Back” and “Love Stinks,” followed soon thereafter with the #1 single, “Centerfold,” and the title track from Freeze-Frame. The pair of tracks coincided with the start of the MTV era and helped make Wolf and the J. Geils Band stars.
Photo of the J. Geils Band (with Peter Wolf at R) from a Best of album collection
Related: When the J. Geils Band finally broke through
Told with gentle humor and often heart-rending poignancy, Waiting on the Moon is a revealing glimpse through lyrical snapshots of artists, writers, actors, and musicians as they work—the creative forces that drive them to achievement; the demons they battle; and the patterns of their human relationships.
In the ’60s, Wolf secured a job as an all-night DJ on the fledgling FM radio station WBCN, where he adopted the persona of the “Woofa Goofa” and spun obscure rock ’n’ roll and early rhythm and blues. His encyclopedic musical knowledge came in handy when he and some like-minded Boston players formed the J. Geils Band, much of whose early repertoire was drawn from Wolf’s vast record collection. In 1970 the band was signed by Jerry Wexler for Atlantic Records where they went on to release nine albums.
Watch a vintage Geils live performance
A prolific artist, Wolf currently tours with his band The Midnight Travelers and will be releasing his ninth solo album in 2025.
Mar 11 – Harvard Bookstore at Cambridge Public Library – Cambridge, MA
Mar 12 – The Strand – New York, NY
Mar 13 – Bergen Performing Arts Center – Englewood, NJ
Mar 16 – Tucson Festival of Books – Tucson, AZ
Mar 18 – Writers on a New England Stage at The Music Hall – Portsmouth, NH
Mar 21 – John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts – Washington DC
Mar 27 – Free Library of Philadelphia – Philadelphia, PA
More dates to follow.
2 Comments so far
Jump into a conversationI’m interested for sure in his relationship with Faye Dunaway that seemed like such an unlikely pair, but she was quite the catch back in the day…lucky dog
The only thing I don’t like about Pete is that he never does concerts out west. But I’ve been a fan for 44 years and really look forward to the book.